Towering
oak trees silohuetted a full moon scudding through charcoal clouds
over the midnight forests of northern Europe. A broad lake rippled
the moon’s image. Two crackling fires fed on sacred oakwood and
offerings jetted skyward from square and round pits set in a spacious
rectangle clearingdefined by a water-filled moat. Surrounding the
fires in a designated order were lean men called druids, sitting
erect, eyes closed or mystically fixed, their long hair-white, blonde,
auburn, brunettestirred by stiff breezes. They wore white
and dark blue cowled robes. A hundred yards awaymixed with owl
hoots and forest murmurstheir chanting could be heard, a flowing
acoustic river: sonorous, metered, slightly musical with alliterated
phrases. Out on the lake were boats stacked with huge, gleaming
heaps of cauldrons, swords, vases, mirrors, trumpets, lyres, furniture,
jewelryall wrought of gold, silver and copper. At the auspicious
apogee astronomically calculated by a druid, the treasure was pushed
overboard, sinking like metallic fish to the bottom. It was a forever
gift to Lugus, the Celt God of Light, perhaps to use as a conduit
of supernatural energy for blessings.

This
was a Celt high ceremony, and such treasure offeringssometimes
representing 25% of a Celt tribe’s economyhave been found by
archeologists in lakes, ravines and votive wells all over Europe.
It is one of dozens of mysteries of a people that are now ghosts
of European history, but who were kindred spirits of the Vedic
Hindus in India 3,000 to 1,500 years ago. Like giant mirrors set
in the Alps and Himalayas, the two societies reflected images
ranging from cosmology to civic law.

The
Celts were a complex, spiritual, vivacious, artistic, businesssmart
people speaking an Indo-European language much like Sanskrit ,
German or Greek, grouped into socially sophisticated tribes that
fanned across Europe 3-4 millennia ago and leapt to Britain and
Irelandfrom eire, a Celtic Goddess overlighting land. Eventually,
they even made Turkey their home, and came very close to turning
Rome into a Celtic eire. The Celts were a handsome people, tall
and muscularno fat allowed by law. The men sported burly mustaches
and elaborate gold torcs banded their necks. The women wore colorful
chequered skirts, blouses and cloaks. The druids were a mystical
order, trained for 20 years in memory, oration, law, metaphysics,
ritual, magic, meditation, science, medicine. They roamed like
free spiritual stallions among all the Celt tribes, and annually
a grand council of all the druids was held on a broad hill or
deep glen.

The
Celts weren’t the only Indo-Europeans settling the European idyll.
Balts, Slavs, Germans and Nordics nestled inall the way north
to the frozen scrags of Iceland. They each radiated a language,
spiritual mindset and culture that tracks that of the early Vedic.
At dawn, Germans daily slipped into cold, sacred rivers for ablution,
chanting and wearing loose-flowing robes and a topknot in their
long hair “so emblematic of the brahmins.” So recorded Tacitus,
the adventurer Greek historian. The Slavs took seven steps around
a holy fire in marriage. The Icelander sagathe Edda contains
creation passages that are Upanishadic in tone.

Imagine
a wide swath from Iceland, Ireland, the European west coast across
southern Russia, the Caucus mountains, through Afghanistan and
into India; that is the common ground for this unnamed mutual
spiritual/cultural system. But there is more. The early Persians,
the Hittites in ancient Turkey, and Greeks and Romans also spoke
Indo-European language branches, and practiced parallel religions.
The European, Asia Minor and Indian geography was blanketed by
peoples speaking shared languages and following a single, multi-faceted
mosaic of religions. Only Hinduism survived in India, though it
mutated, and was nearly eclipsed by Buddhism. The Celtic religion
survived most apparently in the ancient Irish faith and culture.
Like the Vedas, the extant Old Irish literaturesmemorized and
transmitted through a 12-year training by an Irish bard/priest
class who were the inheritors of the druidsare a window into
Celtic thought and lifestyle. Again, like the early Vedas, the
Old Irish sagas and hymns are at times locked in metaphor that
we don’t hold the keys to. There are also vast gulfs of knowledge
missing from the Old Irish literature, for the only existing material
is that put into writingfor the first timeby Irish Christian
monks in the 7th century ce. By that time, 700 years of Roman
warfare and punitive politics (all the way to Britain) followed
by Holy Roman Church hegemony (including Ireland) virtually extinguished
the flames of the European pagan religions. What remained was
a Europe brightly misted in folk wisdom and sagas and inlaid with
thousands of temple sites, holy groves and springs, stoneworks,
fortresses, towns, cremation and burial grounds, sacred rivers,
mountain eeries, seaside grottoes and treasure lakes all bearing
names, artifacts and wisdom of the Celtic Gods, druids and culture,
and other Indo-European pantheons. Most of what is considered
Christian Europe is actually pagan Europe. Christmas day (December
25th) was usurped and inaccurately fixed by Christians from the
Roman festival of Mithra. It came in turn from the Celt festival
of the winter solstice, an astronomical event the druids observed
to set the exact beginning of the new solar year-the same calculation
brahmins made in India.

The
connections between Celtism and Vedism are dazzlingly profuse,
but they aren’t entirely dead branchings. They arch right into
a hotel in County Kerry, Ireland, where historian Bryan McMahon
plays a telling game with every Indian guest he meets. He hums
some Irish folk music and asks them to complete the tune however
they like. He says almost every time they will sing it like they
already knew the song. “For me that is an indication that Indians
and Irishmen have a common past.” A Celt/ druid renaissance is
brewing in Europe and the US.